Exhumation of raft bones adds to island's fears

By Olga Craig and Nick Squires in Sydney

12:01AM GMT 27 Jan 2002

THE sun-bleached bones of a mother and child will be exhumed from their makeshift grave this weekend as the Federal Bureau of Investigation tries to solve the riddle of five skeletons that were washed up on a remote Pacific island.

The bones, the gruesome cargo on board 13 sturdily built rafts found beached on the shores of Woleai, one of the 600 scattered islands of Micronesia, have stirred superstitious fears and puzzled police.

Officers are no nearer to establishing the identities of the sailors than when their remains were first found five months ago.

The first skulls and bones were discovered by Uandiki Eschon, a fisherman, in mid-September. He spotted a well-made bamboo raft, 6ft wide and 4ft high, entangled in tall weeds, just yards from the sandy shore.

"It was the construction that caught my eye," he explained. "It was made from giant bamboo, which does not grow on any of our islands.

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"I knew it must have travelled some way. When I pulled in the raft it was strewn with bones."

As more rafts arrived, some with bodies, some empty, the superstitious islanders grew uneasy. "I wish now I had not found them," said Mr Eschon. "I wish I had left it to someone else to make the grim find."

Mr Eschon's chilling discovery were the skull and bones of two people, one a baby, curled up together. At the feet of the baby's skeleton sat a bunch of rotting bananas and a pot of rice.

Whatever else had happened, the pair - he believes they were a mother and child - - had not died of starvation. Mr Eschon had stumbled on one of the most bizarre nautical mysteries to have emerged from the Pacific.

Another 12 similar rafts containing the remains of five bodies have now been washed up on the shores of the remote islands, where women still go dressed in only traditional grass skirts.

Though the islanders are Christian, superstitions abound and the locals, frightened of evoking the wrath of the gods, buried the first two skeletons to appease their spirits. They are convinced that the bodies are somehow connected with the September 11 terrorist attacks on America.

Five months on and no one knows who the sailors were, where they came from, where they were going or how they died. So baffled are local police that this weekend, as they crisscross the islands to gather evidence, the FBI, which has an office in nearby Guam, will exhume the bodies for DNA testing.

The initial investigation was undertaken by Cpl Alexander Elian from the local police. He said: "The raft was like a little house. Inside there was a very old kerosene lamp, tattered clothes and empty water containers.

"Then I saw the bones. Some were leg bones, others ribs. It was as though it had come from the other side of the world."

Since finding the remains, islanders are loth to go near the shore. Pius Chotailug, the head of Micronesia's national police, understands local fears.

He said: "They are a very isolated and remote community and they often fear things that happen in the wider world. Because the rafts began to arrive just after September 11 they think there is a connection."

The most plausible theory is that the rafts were built by people fleeing ethnic violence in Indonesia. A faded identity card belonging to a man from Bitung, in the Indonesian province of Sulawesi, 1,000 miles to the south-west, was found on board one raft.

Yet while the region has a history of clashes between Christians and Muslims, there were none there last year and the Indonesian authorities say they know of no refugee exodus.

Another possibility is that the bodies are the remains of a group on a fishing expedition, with the rafts being swept from Indonesia or the Philippines by powerful ocean currents.

Dr Richard Herr, an expert on the South Pacific from the University of Tasmania, is sceptical, although he admits that they could have been caught in the Equatorial Counter Current, which flows north-east from Sulawesi in a roughly clockwise direction.

He said: "If so they could have been carried hundreds of miles. Those on board would have drifted out of control and probably died from thirst."

Another suggestion is that the dead might be from Irian Jaya or Papua New Guinea, and were blown off course as they travelled between costal communities.

In the meantime, as the FBI begin to dig, locals have become more convinced that the rafts are the work of evil spirits.

"Without some logical explanation, what are we expected to think?" said Mr Eschon. "They should not be exhuming the bones: it will enrage the spirits. And we islanders will pay."